Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Arizona Republican Congressman Trent Franksannounced yesterday to attendees of the conservative How to Take Back America conference in St. Louis, Missouri that the president is an "enemy of humanity, unfit for government office at any level." A spokesperson tried to walk the statement back, saying that Franks was referring only to "unborn humanity" -- which doesn't wash. Even in those terms, this is an outright call to action to the most scabrous elements of the violent right. (It was part of a larger theme: Kitty Werthmann led a terrifiying workshopat the event, "How to recognize living under Nazis & Communists," in which she literally told people to buy guns and ammunition and "take back America, and not to let 'them' take the country into socialism."

The right hemisphere of our collective national brain has completely lost it. There are no longer any filters of reason or civility in place, and there seems to be a real desire, conscious or unconscious, to ramp up the hate and vitriol until something truly terrible occurs. Part of the reason? The GOP, watching Joe Wilson, knows that fundraising as a marginalized, rump regional party is possible solely through the ability to shock, enrage and horrify its base -- not through bipartisan collaboration or constructive, country-building behavior.

Given that former presidential candidate John McCain, who could be said to have been the prime enabler for the surge in toxic speech and action occurring on the right today (given his endorsement of said themes in his campaign and his selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate, whose only qualification was her ability to rouse the rabble), and given that McCain is Arizona's senior Senator, it is his responsibility to condemn the words of the congressman from his own state.